A swift kick in the Assateague...

Our major concern after arriving late in the afternoon to camp at the Assateague Island National Seashore, en route to North Carolina, was whether or not we would see horses. An evening walk on the beach revealed a high-tide line strewn with an endless collection of horsepucky, so the beasts were obviously about, but the dusk arrival of dense, vicious clouds of black mosquitos sent us running for cover before any actual horses were to be found.

At dawn, with the sun rising out of the ocean and over the dunes, our fears of missing out proved to be unfounded, when we were woken by a loud ripping sound, as of trees being uprooted. But we were camped in the dunes, and there were no trees within a stone's throw of the tent. I peered through the filmy gauze of the mosquito netting. There, all but nuzzling the tent stakes, munching on the grass only a few feet outside the wispy nylon wall, were the wild horses of Assateague. The sound was so loud it sounded to me as if they were chewing on the tufts of hair growing out of my ears.




(Assateague is no place to forget your tent; it might be better named the Assateague Island National Mosquito Infestation Zone).